John Hadidian, Ph.D.
Director, Urban Wildlife
John Hadidian is the director of Urban Wildlife programs, which promote humane means for resolving conflicts between humans and wildlife and advocate connection between people and wildlife in urban and suburban settings through the concept of backyard wildlife sanctuaries. Together these make up Wild Neighbors™, a signature program of The HSUS, aimed at helping people and wildlife co-exist in harmony where they meet on the most immediate and intimate of terms—in our own space.
Hadidian serves on the technical advisory committee of the HSUS Wildlife Land Trust as well as the Harmony Institute's Community Advisory Board. He is past chair of the urban wildlife working group of The Wildlife Society and a member of the Washington Biologist's Field Club. He has served on the national wildlife services advisory committee at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Human-Dominated Systems Directorate for the Department of State's Man and the Biosphere Program. He has also served as an associate editor of the Journal of Urban Ecosystems, chair of the Montgomery County white-tailed deer task force, and a research associate with the Department of Anthropology at The Catholic University of America.
Hadidian is an adjunct professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University at the Northern Virginia Center. He received a doctorate in 1979 and a master's degree in 1975, both in primatology, from The Pennsylvania State University. He received a bachelor's degree in anthropology, with a minor in psychology, from The University of Arizona in 1969.
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